rail trail

Before I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I dreamt of a couple of arcades on an open landscape with sea to the south beyond a rocky shore, in hazy weather; they both involved driving simulators, but I only remember one of them with any specificity; it was pyramidal, its interior just dimly lit by some daylight from the south, and on the north wall seemed to be projected images of car outlines and laser beams that were their headlight beams, sort of piled up and superimposed and jumping around.

Two more scenes, more precisely remembered, from after falling back asleep. The first was that I was on a trail in Germany that paralleled a straight rail line running north-south. It was a summer or early fall late afternoon and the sun was out. The trail was on the east side of the rail line, separated from it by a chain-link fence. Along the way were stretches of evergreen woods on each side, punctuated by clearings on the east side and by views out to a wide open, bright landscape to the west. The trail was unofficial; it was really just a footpath that had been worn in by continuous foot traffic. In places it wove around trees that were right near the fence, moving up and down a slope that extended up from the fence. There were plenty of people along the trail. I forget how I was moving along the trail (southward) at first — I think it was maybe running — but at some point I acquired a shopping cart and sort of rode it, even up the slope around the trees and down some steps formed by wood retaining beams in the ground. Eventually I needed to turn around and return to my point of departure, and I decided to do so at a clearing with a light yellow, windowless cinderblock building (looking like a water substation, and with its side walls angling a bit out toward the trail, so that it had a sort of loudspeaker-icon shape in plan) at its north side, and with a concrete path receding to the east through the middle of the clearing, with a yellowish boat near the path a little ways into the clearing. The last I remember of the scene is proceeding back northward on the trail.

There was a red house with a screen porch on its east side and a large field, bounded by woods on at least the east and south sides, beyond the porch to the east. I and a largish group of friends and acquaintances walked out into the field and gathered around near the east woods edge. It was, again, a sunny late afternoon. Someone played the Wu Tang’s “Shame on a N****” on small speakers from their iPod, and ODB himself, being part of the assembled group, rapped his verses and chorus over it. I also rapped what I knew of it. Subsequently, as I walked back toward the house, it was a sunny morning instead, and there were pigeons out on the lawn. I fed them pieces of chocolate donuts. Eventually we all went back into the house to leave; the way through turned out to be via locker and shower rooms, like a public pool, and the front door was on the west end of the north side of the house.